The government is all set to revamp environment policies to ensure that corporations find it easier to do business in India but will leave the protection of forests and other natural resources to the shield of old traditions and citizens' initiatives. That was Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday suggested on Monday in his address to state environment and forest ministers and bureaucrats at a conference in New Delhi to finalise changes to green regulations.
The recommendations of the TSR Subramanian report that has proposed changes to six laws that govern environment, forest and wildlife are likely to be considered at the conference. The title of the opening session was “Ease of Doing Business”.
Modi said that India has had a long tradition of worshipping and protecting the environment. “JC Bose showed that plants are living organisms but that is not when we in India started believing it," he said. "We have believed, since the time of the Gita and the Mahabharat, that God lives in plants and that’s why we worship and protect plants as taught to us traditionally.”
Ancient wisdom
In similar vein, he claimed that recycling was always a part of Indian life and offered up the example of how “our grandmothers” used old clothes as bedding and cleaning rags.
The perception that India was not climate conscious came from India’s diffidence to communicate its traditional practices on a global stage, he suggested. “Centuries of being under foreign rule have made us conscious of what we say in front of others,” he said. India must be the leader in saving the world from climate change, he said, a problem for which the developed world has found no solution. He went on to list some examples of the homegrown wisdom of our ancestors that has been lost in modern life.
Just as he had done in his televised Teacher’s Day address to children across the country in September, Modi recalled an old village practice: in many parts of India, on full-moon nights, grandmothers would ask children to thread needles by only the light of the glowing celestial disc. “If our urban bodies decide that, on full moon nights we won’t use streetlights," the prime minister said. "Not only that, we can have a festival of threading needles by moonlight. It will be a community event and will also protect the environment. Imagine how much power would be saved and by that, how much lower emissions would be.”
Cycling and recycling
Fuel emissions could be cut by designating Sundays as bicycle days or not using fuel-driven vehicles on one day a week. “The world is negotiating rules and regulations to curb carbon emissions but the root of the problem is that we are unwilling to change the way we live,” Modi said.
On the global stage, meanwhile, countries are queuing up to outline post-2020 climate action plans that will form the basis for an international deal to counter global warming at the climate talks in Paris in December. The US, Switzerland, the European Union, Norway and Mexico have submitted their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Even China said in November that it would reach its peak emissions by 2030. India, which has maintained that it has low per-capita emissions and needs some leeway to help economic growth and battle poverty, is expected to submit its INDC by September.
Modi seemed aware that his suggestions about relying on tradition to save the environment would be met with scepticism in some quarters. “I know all the English-speaking people will make fun of this for the next 24 hours but that’s because they think the wrong way,” he declared in a pre-emptive salvo at this critics.
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The recommendations of the TSR Subramanian report that has proposed changes to six laws that govern environment, forest and wildlife are likely to be considered at the conference. The title of the opening session was “Ease of Doing Business”.
Modi said that India has had a long tradition of worshipping and protecting the environment. “JC Bose showed that plants are living organisms but that is not when we in India started believing it," he said. "We have believed, since the time of the Gita and the Mahabharat, that God lives in plants and that’s why we worship and protect plants as taught to us traditionally.”
Ancient wisdom
In similar vein, he claimed that recycling was always a part of Indian life and offered up the example of how “our grandmothers” used old clothes as bedding and cleaning rags.
The perception that India was not climate conscious came from India’s diffidence to communicate its traditional practices on a global stage, he suggested. “Centuries of being under foreign rule have made us conscious of what we say in front of others,” he said. India must be the leader in saving the world from climate change, he said, a problem for which the developed world has found no solution. He went on to list some examples of the homegrown wisdom of our ancestors that has been lost in modern life.
Just as he had done in his televised Teacher’s Day address to children across the country in September, Modi recalled an old village practice: in many parts of India, on full-moon nights, grandmothers would ask children to thread needles by only the light of the glowing celestial disc. “If our urban bodies decide that, on full moon nights we won’t use streetlights," the prime minister said. "Not only that, we can have a festival of threading needles by moonlight. It will be a community event and will also protect the environment. Imagine how much power would be saved and by that, how much lower emissions would be.”
Cycling and recycling
Fuel emissions could be cut by designating Sundays as bicycle days or not using fuel-driven vehicles on one day a week. “The world is negotiating rules and regulations to curb carbon emissions but the root of the problem is that we are unwilling to change the way we live,” Modi said.
On the global stage, meanwhile, countries are queuing up to outline post-2020 climate action plans that will form the basis for an international deal to counter global warming at the climate talks in Paris in December. The US, Switzerland, the European Union, Norway and Mexico have submitted their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Even China said in November that it would reach its peak emissions by 2030. India, which has maintained that it has low per-capita emissions and needs some leeway to help economic growth and battle poverty, is expected to submit its INDC by September.
Modi seemed aware that his suggestions about relying on tradition to save the environment would be met with scepticism in some quarters. “I know all the English-speaking people will make fun of this for the next 24 hours but that’s because they think the wrong way,” he declared in a pre-emptive salvo at this critics.